RIGHTS-MEXICO: ‘Over Our Dead Bodies’ Say Farmers to New Airport

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Nov 28 2001 (IPS) - Plans for a badly needed new international airport in Mexico City, a megaproject that has awakened the interest of powerful investors, have run into stiff resistance from small-scale farmers whose land is to be expropriated.

“They’ll only take me out of here feet first. This is my family’s land, and it’s the only thing we have,” said Asunción Madero, 70, an illiterate farmer who must abandon her two-hectare plot of land, according to a decree issued by the government of Vicente Fox for the expropriation of property in the area where the new terminal is to go in.

Madero lives in Texcoco, an area of barely fertile, salinated soil reclaimed from what was once a lake, located 15 kms east of the capital, where farmers work hard to produce small subsistence harvests of oats, alfalfa, livestock fodder, beans and corn.

The government decided in late October that the new international airport would be built on 15,000 hectares of land in Texcoco, 5,000 of which are to be expropriated for the purpose. Some 4,300 people will be directly affected, according to the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform.

However, the real estate developments that would grow up around the new terminal threaten to put an end to the traditional subsistence farming way of life of as many as 25,000 people, according to activists.

People living on the land where the airport is to be built, an area that has been inhabited for more than 100 years, are determined to block the project.

A group of around 200 families has staged three demonstrations and roadblocks in the past few weeks on the streets of the capital, carrying machetes and other farm implements, warning that the builders will have to pass over “our dead bodies.”

Local residents who are to lose their land are also organising to keep out the police and the military, while they hold assemblies and hang up banners opposing construction of the airport.

“We don’t want an airport. Why don’t they leave us alone? This is our life,” said another farmer, José Anguiano. “What are we going to do somewhere else, where are we going to go?”

The local residents are not even interested in listening to the offers of jobs and housing presented by the government of the state of Mexico, where Texcoco is located.

“We are prepared to die if necessary. Everyone, from the young to the old, is united in this,” said Manuel, a young man who is facing the loss of the one-hectare plot of land he inherited from his father.

The Fox administration says the airport will cost three billion dollars, plus another 58 million in compensation to the families whose land is expropriated at a price of 1,600 dollars per hectare.

The aim is to inaugurate the airport in late 2006. The new terminal, which will be surrounded by a nature reserve, will have the capacity for an annual flow of 60 million passengers.

The current airport, located within the city limits, was built 50 years ago to serve nine million passengers a year. Although its capacity was boosted to 21 million, there is no room for further expansion.

The new terminal will be the most ambitious project, in terms of investment and sheer size, undertaken in Mexico in 20 years. Construction firms, hotels and future operators of the terminal say they are ready to take part in the tendering to be opened up by the government.

The Fox administration said the expropriation of property would go ahead despite the opposition of local residents, who have filed legal challenges to block the government’s plans.

Lawyers say the expropriations will eventually take place, despite the opposition, since they are based on existing laws, and because the airport is considered a project of “public interest.”

The blueprints for the airport will not be ready until early 2003, after which the government will issue the call for bids. An estimated 75 percent of the costs will be covered by foreign investors, and the rest by the state.

The airport will be the most modern in the world, surrounded by a model nature preserve, said the Secretariat of Communications and Transport.

Environmentalists are also opposed to the planned location of the new terminal, pointing out that the Texcoco wetlands are a vital wintering spot for tens of thousands of migratory birds.

But while opposition politicians and environmentalists reject the plan to build the new airport in Texcoco, the government says it will not back down on the decision, which was reached after 30 long years of debate on the need for a new terminal.

“We are already working on the project, and there is no doubt that it will go ahead,” said Deputy Minister of Communications and Transport, Aaron Dychter. According to the government, those opposed to the project are a tiny minority.

While plans continue moving forward, the farmers about to lose their property say no one will move them from their homes and their land, and have threatened to resort to violence if necessary.